on PolicyMic
Zack Fulkerson 'And Addison, you mentioned their politics were "ultra conservative, libertarian." But aren't libertarians closer to liberals on many social issues?' Great point.Calling a person ultra-conservative and libertarian simultaneously doesn't work.
Zack Fulkerson Now I'm totally on board with you. Democrats should sweep the ticket in 2016. If they don't, they're doing something majorly wrong.
Zack Fulkerson Anencephalic's have virtually no brain functions other than those run by it's autonomous nervous system. It has no potential to lead any future life of value. If it's threatening the mother's own future life of value, this should be a fairly easy decision for the court to make.
Zack Fulkerson I'm failing to see much benefit at this point, Ben. And as I've told you before, I'd be much more in favor of private health savings accounts. I find it troubling that I don't really have that option under the new law. You've written the law "protects the free market," but it actually restricts the market from finding viable alternatives. Instead, it adds those 30 million+ people to an already broken system, and forces a middle-class (already inundated with taxes) to take the burden. I agree to some extent with your analysis on how people make decisions re:constitutionality, but come to a different conclusion. If there is such a razor thin split, how could it possibly be constitutional? What benefits might I enjoy, specifically?
Zack Fulkerson Are they, too, the final arbiter of character counts also? Because I've noticed that you are not at all limited like the rest of us, and you seem to be taking full advantage of it.
Zack Fulkerson Or a political decision to uphold a law for fear of the court being seen as political? In other words, was this a win for the conservatives who were worried about the extent to which this law overreaches under commerce clause jurisprudence ... or was it a win for Obama and the Democrats, who were just too popular for Roberts to shut down without ruining the courts reputation. These are not rhetorical questions, by the way. I seriously wonder why the guy would change his mind hours before the decision, and dance around the law anyway he can conjure up just to make a blatantly unconstitutional law "constitutional." Pretty frightening stuff, actually.
Zack Fulkerson Lower courts have decided that individual mandate falls within the limits of the Anti-Injunction Act because it is, because it is a financial assessment collected by the IRS through the normal means of taxation. But Roberts comes to a different conclusion: the mandate falls under the Constitutional power “to lay and collect taxes” because it works like a tax; however, it does not fall under the limits of the Anti-Injunction Act because Congress didn't “intend” for it to be a tax when it was written. Who is Robert's to say what Congress's intent was when writing the bill? Clearly this is a political decision. What say you Ben? A political decision to strictly limit Congress's power under the commerce clause? (cont.)
Zack Fulkerson Ben, which aspects of the bill would you like to talk about? I'm especially interested in the Constitutional aspects. Under the Anti-Injunction Act of 1861, the Supreme Court is not given authority to hear cases regarding the constitutionality of certain taxes until the tax had actually been paid by the person filing the grievance. Roberts explicitly addresses this barrier in his opinion for the court, noting that the Anti-Injunction Act did not apply, because the mandate was not a tax, but "a penalty." He goes on to say, however, that the mandate is constitutional under the taxing power. Is the mandate a tax or not a tax?
Zack Fulkerson I'm just trying to draw an analogy (albeit a really bad one, admittedly) to the fact that most people don't like other people telling them what to do with their money. Everybody tries to minimize the amount of taxes they pay. Everybody tries to maximize the profit they get. But nobody likes it when some knowitall has a more altruistic plan for what to do with their own hard earned cash. So whether it be Mitt Romney telling you what you do with your income and profits (or how much you sell a service for, or whatever) ... or you telling Mitt Romney what he does with his income and profits, it's hypocritical either way. Both of you are trying to make as much money as possible, and pay as little taxes as possible.
Zack Fulkerson Well, you've set up an excellent strawman here, but I don't think I said that a woman is completely without rights. But calling abortion as a form of birth control a "right" is a completely different beast.
Zack Fulkerson I might add to that by saying that, though I'm assuming you didn't choose your title, I'm skeptical of the assertion that a woman has the "right" to an abortion on demand, for virtually any reason, as is the case in the United States. No more so than I have a "right" to kill an infant or an adult.
Zack Fulkerson Is feeling pain necessary for humanity? Suppose you were born with a disease where you were rendered incapable of feeling pain. http://www.ydr.com/ci_15326760 Does this mean that you are suddenly less entitled to a right to life as anyone else? This is indeed the wrong approach to challenging abortion laws, but only because the argument does not yield the absurd result. Pro-life advocates should be arguing from the moral perspective that life begins at the moment of conception, and abortion is morally wrong because it deprives a human of his or her future life of value. I'll agree that this is a poor approach to developing a valid and consistent pro-life position, but I will not agree that they're fighting some sort of lost cause.
Zack Fulkerson Robin, I think you misunderstand David. He was saying YOU want to be left in peace. Not that this website is some kind of hippie love-in.
Zack Fulkerson Would you like to read some of the columns I wrote for my local newspaper? http://mywebtimes.com/news/search/?query=Zack%20Fulkerson I once heard something about not throwing stones in glass houses. It was probably from that old bald guy, whom I'm confident is infinitely more successful than you. People with success stories have nothing to hide Robin. You, on the other hand, must have a lot of shame to bury.
Zack Fulkerson Gary, not sure I would totally agree with your predictions, except the Dems currently have the Senate, and not the House ;)
Zack Fulkerson So wait. You are here, by your own admission, using a fake name and no picture ... purposely. And you've contributed absolutely NOTHING to the dialogue on this website since you've gotten here. Yet you're still hanging around? And sensible people like John Ashman and Bob Dohse got the can? Man, you are some kind of douchebag aren't yah Robin?
Zack Fulkerson I'm extremely humbled that you would cross partisan lines to send praise to Beck for what he's done here. Too many were quick to demonize him, as if he were organizing tractor trailers full of food and other supplies for his own publicity. Thank you for this balanced and appreciative piece, and congratulations on Glenn tweeting your story!
Zack Fulkerson Ben, Certainly I have the right to decide what is done with MY body. But that's not what is being debated. The mother and the fetus are two separate bodies (I would say two separate people), so this is not an apples to apples comparison. The science is settled: a fetus is both human and alive from the moment of conception. That being so, it is seriously immoral to deny that living human his or her future life of value, the same as it would be for any adult. It would only be applicable to say that fetuses are "resources of a woman's body" if the same were true for infant children. In that case, what "right" does the gov't have to tell any woman whether or not she is legally obligated to feed and sustain a toddler, if not a fetus?
Zack Fulkerson "Weiner has built his career off policies that are good for women. He has a strong pro-choice voting record." The way these things follow each other is alarming to me, since the majority of aborted fetuses are girls. That doesn't strike me as a policy that's good for women.
Zack Fulkerson I agree with that portion of your argument wholeheartedly Christine. It is most certainly a different, more complicated issue if the couple can't get married to nullify the clause.
Zack Fulkerson I guess ultimately the point I'm getting is that mobility is still relatively high in the United States, DESPITE government intervention, not due to a lack there of. And further, you won't get all of the best answers if you aren't looking at the full picture. Most Americans in the top fifth, bottom fifth, or any quintile of income earners for that matter, will not be in the same quintile in a decade ... let alone for the rest of their lives. You paint a dismal picture, but thankfully it's mostly unfounded.
Zack Fulkerson And, just as there are these quick and impermanent spikes in income, there are also dips in income. Just as people can come into fortunes through hard work (owning your own business) or luck (investments or bets that pay off), so to can people fall to the bottom of the ladder through bad luck or pure laziness. These drops and income can mislead anyone who is looking at statistic rather than flesh and blood people. The extremely wealthy can have a year where they take huge losses, putting their total income for the given year at zero or less. These people will appear at the bottom in the data, without ever actually being "poor."
Zack Fulkerson Sean A 1995 study from the Federal Reserve Bank in Boston showed that less than 1% of Americans are permanently in the bottom 20%. A ten year study from the Treasury Dept. also shows that of those who made of the top 1% of income earners in 1996, less than half of those people were still there by 2005. We are very quick to talk about "rich" and "poor" as if these were groups that are made up of the same people, year after year, when economists are well aware that this is not at all the case. The "rich" is especially not a permanent class of people, as people with high incomes are far more likely to have gotten there through spikes in income (perhaps from real estate sales) where more than half of millionaires made their fortunes. cont
Zack Fulkerson What difference does it make, exactly? You are claiming that anyone who doesn't have a name I recognize won't end up successful. And yet the "most famous" person on that list is someone both of us have never heard of. You seem to just be further buttressing my hypothesis. Goodwin starred in Walk the Line, which was a smash hit that grossed $200 million. In Sean McElwee's America, wouldn't that be a position they reserve solely for the privileged?
Zack Fulkerson IMDb's nepotism list includes 226 people total. Their birthday list for today includes 789. http://tinyurl.com/pl4u6nj More actors and actresses born on May 22nd than there are who have family connections in "the Biz". If the same is true for every day of the year, I think that sort of shatters your point, doesn't it?
on PolicyMic
Zack Fulkerson 'And Addison, you mentioned their politics were "ultra conservative, libertarian." But aren't libertarians closer to liberals on many social issues?' Great point.Calling a person ultra-conservative and libertarian simultaneously doesn't work.
Zack Fulkerson Now I'm totally on board with you. Democrats should sweep the ticket in 2016. If they don't, they're doing something majorly wrong.
Zack Fulkerson Anencephalic's have virtually no brain functions other than those run by it's autonomous nervous system. It has no potential to lead any future life of value. If it's threatening the mother's own future life of value, this should be a fairly easy decision for the court to make.
Zack Fulkerson I'm failing to see much benefit at this point, Ben. And as I've told you before, I'd be much more in favor of private health savings accounts. I find it troubling that I don't really have that option under the new law. You've written the law "protects the free market," but it actually restricts the market from finding viable alternatives. Instead, it adds those 30 million+ people to an already broken system, and forces a middle-class (already inundated with taxes) to take the burden. I agree to some extent with your analysis on how people make decisions re:constitutionality, but come to a different conclusion. If there is such a razor thin split, how could it possibly be constitutional? What benefits might I enjoy, specifically?
Zack Fulkerson Are they, too, the final arbiter of character counts also? Because I've noticed that you are not at all limited like the rest of us, and you seem to be taking full advantage of it.
Zack Fulkerson Or a political decision to uphold a law for fear of the court being seen as political? In other words, was this a win for the conservatives who were worried about the extent to which this law overreaches under commerce clause jurisprudence ... or was it a win for Obama and the Democrats, who were just too popular for Roberts to shut down without ruining the courts reputation. These are not rhetorical questions, by the way. I seriously wonder why the guy would change his mind hours before the decision, and dance around the law anyway he can conjure up just to make a blatantly unconstitutional law "constitutional." Pretty frightening stuff, actually.
Zack Fulkerson Lower courts have decided that individual mandate falls within the limits of the Anti-Injunction Act because it is, because it is a financial assessment collected by the IRS through the normal means of taxation. But Roberts comes to a different conclusion: the mandate falls under the Constitutional power “to lay and collect taxes” because it works like a tax; however, it does not fall under the limits of the Anti-Injunction Act because Congress didn't “intend” for it to be a tax when it was written. Who is Robert's to say what Congress's intent was when writing the bill? Clearly this is a political decision. What say you Ben? A political decision to strictly limit Congress's power under the commerce clause? (cont.)
Zack Fulkerson Ben, which aspects of the bill would you like to talk about? I'm especially interested in the Constitutional aspects. Under the Anti-Injunction Act of 1861, the Supreme Court is not given authority to hear cases regarding the constitutionality of certain taxes until the tax had actually been paid by the person filing the grievance. Roberts explicitly addresses this barrier in his opinion for the court, noting that the Anti-Injunction Act did not apply, because the mandate was not a tax, but "a penalty." He goes on to say, however, that the mandate is constitutional under the taxing power. Is the mandate a tax or not a tax?
Zack Fulkerson I'm just trying to draw an analogy (albeit a really bad one, admittedly) to the fact that most people don't like other people telling them what to do with their money. Everybody tries to minimize the amount of taxes they pay. Everybody tries to maximize the profit they get. But nobody likes it when some knowitall has a more altruistic plan for what to do with their own hard earned cash. So whether it be Mitt Romney telling you what you do with your income and profits (or how much you sell a service for, or whatever) ... or you telling Mitt Romney what he does with his income and profits, it's hypocritical either way. Both of you are trying to make as much money as possible, and pay as little taxes as possible.
Zack Fulkerson Well, you've set up an excellent strawman here, but I don't think I said that a woman is completely without rights. But calling abortion as a form of birth control a "right" is a completely different beast.
Zack Fulkerson I might add to that by saying that, though I'm assuming you didn't choose your title, I'm skeptical of the assertion that a woman has the "right" to an abortion on demand, for virtually any reason, as is the case in the United States. No more so than I have a "right" to kill an infant or an adult.
Zack Fulkerson Is feeling pain necessary for humanity? Suppose you were born with a disease where you were rendered incapable of feeling pain. http://www.ydr.com/ci_15326760 Does this mean that you are suddenly less entitled to a right to life as anyone else? This is indeed the wrong approach to challenging abortion laws, but only because the argument does not yield the absurd result. Pro-life advocates should be arguing from the moral perspective that life begins at the moment of conception, and abortion is morally wrong because it deprives a human of his or her future life of value. I'll agree that this is a poor approach to developing a valid and consistent pro-life position, but I will not agree that they're fighting some sort of lost cause.
Zack Fulkerson Robin, I think you misunderstand David. He was saying YOU want to be left in peace. Not that this website is some kind of hippie love-in.
Zack Fulkerson Would you like to read some of the columns I wrote for my local newspaper? http://mywebtimes.com/news/search/?query=Zack%20Fulkerson I once heard something about not throwing stones in glass houses. It was probably from that old bald guy, whom I'm confident is infinitely more successful than you. People with success stories have nothing to hide Robin. You, on the other hand, must have a lot of shame to bury.
Zack Fulkerson Gary, not sure I would totally agree with your predictions, except the Dems currently have the Senate, and not the House ;)
Zack Fulkerson So wait. You are here, by your own admission, using a fake name and no picture ... purposely. And you've contributed absolutely NOTHING to the dialogue on this website since you've gotten here. Yet you're still hanging around? And sensible people like John Ashman and Bob Dohse got the can? Man, you are some kind of douchebag aren't yah Robin?
Zack Fulkerson I'm extremely humbled that you would cross partisan lines to send praise to Beck for what he's done here. Too many were quick to demonize him, as if he were organizing tractor trailers full of food and other supplies for his own publicity. Thank you for this balanced and appreciative piece, and congratulations on Glenn tweeting your story!
Zack Fulkerson Ben, Certainly I have the right to decide what is done with MY body. But that's not what is being debated. The mother and the fetus are two separate bodies (I would say two separate people), so this is not an apples to apples comparison. The science is settled: a fetus is both human and alive from the moment of conception. That being so, it is seriously immoral to deny that living human his or her future life of value, the same as it would be for any adult. It would only be applicable to say that fetuses are "resources of a woman's body" if the same were true for infant children. In that case, what "right" does the gov't have to tell any woman whether or not she is legally obligated to feed and sustain a toddler, if not a fetus?
Zack Fulkerson "Weiner has built his career off policies that are good for women. He has a strong pro-choice voting record." The way these things follow each other is alarming to me, since the majority of aborted fetuses are girls. That doesn't strike me as a policy that's good for women.
Zack Fulkerson I agree with that portion of your argument wholeheartedly Christine. It is most certainly a different, more complicated issue if the couple can't get married to nullify the clause.
Zack Fulkerson I guess ultimately the point I'm getting is that mobility is still relatively high in the United States, DESPITE government intervention, not due to a lack there of. And further, you won't get all of the best answers if you aren't looking at the full picture. Most Americans in the top fifth, bottom fifth, or any quintile of income earners for that matter, will not be in the same quintile in a decade ... let alone for the rest of their lives. You paint a dismal picture, but thankfully it's mostly unfounded.
Zack Fulkerson And, just as there are these quick and impermanent spikes in income, there are also dips in income. Just as people can come into fortunes through hard work (owning your own business) or luck (investments or bets that pay off), so to can people fall to the bottom of the ladder through bad luck or pure laziness. These drops and income can mislead anyone who is looking at statistic rather than flesh and blood people. The extremely wealthy can have a year where they take huge losses, putting their total income for the given year at zero or less. These people will appear at the bottom in the data, without ever actually being "poor."
Zack Fulkerson Sean A 1995 study from the Federal Reserve Bank in Boston showed that less than 1% of Americans are permanently in the bottom 20%. A ten year study from the Treasury Dept. also shows that of those who made of the top 1% of income earners in 1996, less than half of those people were still there by 2005. We are very quick to talk about "rich" and "poor" as if these were groups that are made up of the same people, year after year, when economists are well aware that this is not at all the case. The "rich" is especially not a permanent class of people, as people with high incomes are far more likely to have gotten there through spikes in income (perhaps from real estate sales) where more than half of millionaires made their fortunes. cont
Zack Fulkerson What difference does it make, exactly? You are claiming that anyone who doesn't have a name I recognize won't end up successful. And yet the "most famous" person on that list is someone both of us have never heard of. You seem to just be further buttressing my hypothesis. Goodwin starred in Walk the Line, which was a smash hit that grossed $200 million. In Sean McElwee's America, wouldn't that be a position they reserve solely for the privileged?
Zack Fulkerson IMDb's nepotism list includes 226 people total. Their birthday list for today includes 789. http://tinyurl.com/pl4u6nj More actors and actresses born on May 22nd than there are who have family connections in "the Biz". If the same is true for every day of the year, I think that sort of shatters your point, doesn't it?